Redefining the "Athlete": From Teenage Performance to Menopausal Health

Sometimes the most powerful voice in women’s health is the one that has spent decades watching bodies move through every season, every sport, and every decade of life.

In this podcast episode, I join Lily for a conversation around women’s health, sports nutrition, hormones, performance, recovery, and the many ways female physiology refuses to fit neatly into the standard rules.

As a sports nutritionist, naturopath, and university lecturer, I’ve worked with everyone from elite endurance athletes to teenage girls trying to recover their cycles, through to women navigating perimenopause and wondering why their body suddenly seems to have changed the rules overnight.

And honestly, one thing ties so much of my clinical work together: The rules women are often given are usually not the rules their body is actually playing by.

This conversation dives into the gap between generic health advice and what female physiology is often actually asking for.

Because sometimes the issue is not motivation, discipline, or training harder.
Sometimes the body simply needs a different kind of support.

In this conversation, we unpack:

The myth of “overtraining” and why relative energy deficiency is often what’s really happening when women lose their periods
Why fuelling before and after training is one of the strongest signals of safety you can send the body
Why appetite, cravings, and metabolic rate genuinely shift across the menstrual cycle
The endurance athlete trap of spending thousands on equipment and coaching while neglecting nutrition
Sweat rates, sodium losses, and why generic electrolyte plans can massively miss the mark
Why perimenopause changes the rules around recovery, body composition, alcohol, sleep, and strength training
Protein, muscle mass, and why muscle is becoming one of the strongest predictors of healthy ageing and longevity
Bone density, missing periods, and why even six months without a cycle matters physiologically
Why body fat ranges are highly individual and why owning your own build matters
Finding movement you genuinely enjoy and building a life around sustainable movement, not punishment

This episode is for anyone who has been told to train harder, eat cleaner, do more, do less… and still feels like they cannot quite find the version of health or performance that feels right for their body.

What I care about most is helping women understand their own physiology better, so they can stop fighting their body and start working with it instead.

🎧 Catch the full conversation on Spotify